Traditionally, to produce an electrical glow discharge, a DC voltage potential is placed across two electrodes. If the voltage potential is gradually increased, at the breakdown voltage VB, the current and the amount of excitation of the neutral gas becomes large enough to produce a visible plasma. According to Paschen's law, the breakdown voltage for a particular gas depends on the product (p.d) of the gas pressure and the distance between the electrodes. For any gas, there is said to be a unique p.d value referred to as the Stoletow point where volumetric ionization is the maximum. For example, the Stoletow point for air requires a minimum VB=360 V and p.d=5.7 Torr-mm. Typical plasma actuators have an interelectrode gap of ±d mm where d˜3-5 mm. Such actuators produce mN/m thrust with kN/m3 thrust density with 10 s of watts input. In such actuators the electric field generated by charge separation is concentrated near the electrodes and the bulk region does not get much influence of the high electric field as the quasi-neutral plasma dominates the bulk region. Thus, an alternative configuration is needed such that the entire region is space charge separated, thus minimizing the quasi-neutral region and improving thrust density.